In recent years, federal and state legislation has been proposed to increase the use of sustainable (bio-based) and recycled packaging materials. The adoption of recycled plastic or bio-plastic alternatives has been slow due to contaminant loads, the costs associated with collection and sorting, and overall quality. Bio-plastics have been viewed as a costly alternative to traditional plastics. Thus, there is a need to incentivize the use of bioplastics and recycled packaging materials.
Agricultural growers and packers utilize plastic packaging for retail convenience foods and food service products and are currently the largest users of plastic film and sheeting in the United States. Studies have indicated that the vitamin content of current fruits and vegetables is significantly lower than 50 years ago. This is important as most Americans do not eat enough of these products.
It has been suggested that the increased haze, scattering, and filtering of light in recycled and bio-plastic substrates reduces the rate of product degradation. As such, recent initiatives by retailers have called for an increase in the use of recycled packaging substrates. However, the nature of recycled packaging material, which includes variance in the overall composition, makes it difficult to predict how effective the final plastic product will be at providing these benefits. Further, once the product is finalized, there is no opportunity to adjust the composition to provide the maximum benefit with respect to increasing the shelf-life of perishable products.
The present invention is directed to overcoming these and other deficiencies in the art.